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You know times have really changed when the superheroes of yesteryear who were applauded for pursuing Nazis have been replaced by superheroes who deplore the pursuit of Nazis and men who are “arch villains” for killing Nazis. Maybe it’s because it might offend Muslims, Pat Buchanan, and Lars Von Trier. Sadly, that 180 in what makes one a “superhero” is stark in “X-Men: First Class,” the X-Men prequel, which debuts in theaters today.

I absolutely loved the first half of this movie. It’s the second half that completely ruined it for me. Not only was it a mess, but the ultimate message of the movie is that it’s a bad thing for a Holocaust survivor to want to go after the Nazi doctor who murdered his mother–that vengeance is bad. Huh?

Also, sorry comicbookland-cum-Hollywood, but your stories about the West and the Communists being coaxed into Cold War nuclear war by evildoers is getting old and very stale. Anything to avoid touching on a more current battle, like the West versus Islam, right?

We watch a young kid with superpowers to move things with his mind taken from his mother in a concentration camp into the offices of a Mengele-esque Nazi doctor, Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon–hey, more connections for “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon!”). When Shaw cannot make the child do his mind-bending feats, he kills the kid’s mother in front of his eyes. The kid kills a few Nazis, but spares the doc, which I didn’t get. Then, the kid grows up with the numbers tattooed on his arm as a reminder. He goes to Argentina to hunt the Nazi doc. The scene, in which he encounters two immigrant German “farmers” in a Buenos Aires bar, is fantastic. And I love what he does to them.

Eventually this Holocaust survivor (played by the talented German-Irish actor Michael Fassbender) is recruited into the X-Men, which is originally assembled by a CIA doctor whose science fiction realities are pooh-poohed by jaded, chauvinistic CIA brass. The group is assembled by a female CIA agent (Rose Byrne) who discovers Shaw’s partner in crime, supervillain Emma Frost (January Jones), when she is spying on a wayward general in Vegas. Shaw has learned how to get super powers and consume energy, staying youthful and powerful, after years of training and watching the Holocaust survivor do his magic.

Now, it’s the Cold War, and Shaw and Frost are trying to get the U.S., Cuba, and the Soviets to start a nuclear war against each other. Why? They don’t say. They’re just evil, and Hollywood can’t come up with anything better when they try so hard to avoid Islam. Oh, and one other thing interesting (or not so interesting, depending on your take): Shaw’s devil-like co-villain, Azazel, has a name that is the anglicized pronunciation of the Hebrew word for “hell”: azazel. Hmmm . . . .

To fight these villains a scientist from England, Charles Xavier, and his transmorphic superhero female friend from childhood, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), help the CIA team find and recruit people with various powers to join the X-Men. But eventually, after some violent fights between the X-Men and Shaw and his henchment, one of them, Angel (a human fly played by Zoe Kravitz, Lenny’s daughter with Lisa Bonet), joins Kevin Bacon’s team of villains, with little explanation as to why.

Oh, and why put a naked superhero in a kids’ movie–a superhero movie you know young kids will see? Raven is shown topless. And while, apparently, her form of superhero doesn’t have nipples, the kids might as well be watching a topless blue stripper with pasties on. Same difference. Thanks, Hollywood, for the gratuitous breast reveal in a kids’ superhero movie. Every comic book geek weirdo fantasizes about what a chick superhero looks like naked. Wonder no more, kids. Kinky, right? … and more suited to Larry Flynt’s kind of X than the X-Men kind.

Like I said, the second half of the movie ends up being a mess of special effects, fighting, and useless left-wing peacenik-isms. Uh, no thanks. And again, eventually, the Holocaust survivor–who gets the name Magneto–is a “villain” because he wants to kill the Nazi doctor who murdered his mother. Absurd. What’s next, 50 years from now, they’ll be doing movies showing Navy SEALS as supervillains for killing Osama Bin Laden?

With the symbiosis of ever-increasing Islamic immigration to America and Islamo-pandering in Hollywood, don’t count it out. And, hey, it’s already been done. . . by Steven Spielberg with “Munich” (read my review).

Go to it to see the first half, then leave. You won’t be missing much. There ain’t nothin’ “First Class”–or, even, first–about this messy piece of leftism.

I already believe that you exist. However, I will look forward to seeing your video.

As for the “X-Men” movie, assuming that you haven’t seen it yet, you can see it, then give me your opinion. You saw in my previous post what my criteria is. If you already have, well, then I hope to see your opinion of it posted here tomorrow.

seriously people don’t get dragged into this, I can’t believe you guys wasted your time replying to this troll all day. if you had just ignored him, he would have made two or three posts and then left.

So uhh…did she miss the part where Magneto is supposed to be what happens when you go so far to hurt those that wronged you, you end up being just as bad as them?
No?
Missed that part?
Maybe she was too busy wondering why none of the Russians had horns or pitchforks.

Have to disagree with you, Debbie. My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, even though we are not huge X-Men fans. We did know enough about the back story to “get” the film. I did question why Magneto did not kill Shaw when he had a chance, but we figured it was because he was a kid and did not know how to control his power (he destroyed the torture room). The two Nazi soldiers just happened to be wearing helmets (killed accidentally). A good portion of the movie concentrates on Magneto learning to control his power. Angel, the “human fly” character who changes her affiliation and goes with the bad guys, was not that moral to begin with (a stripper), so I was not surprised by her actions. Part of this movie was filmed in Jekyll Island, GA. We happened to be there on business, and stayed at the same hotel much of the cast and crew did. The convention center was destroyed and was to be part of the movie. The Authority had to move the date up, and the movie crew arrived after the convention center was destroyed and had to change plans midstream. All in all, a good movie that I wouldn’t mind seeing again.

“Oh, and why put a naked superhero in a kids’ movie–a superhero movie you know young kids will see? Raven is shown topless. And while, apparently, her form of superhero doesn’t have nipples, the kids might as well be watching a topless blue stripper with pasties on.”

A: Last I checked, strippers don’t stand around talking about mutant pride. They strip and dance around poles, grabbing themselves and accentuating their assets. Didn’t see any of that.

B: That’s not their damn problem if parents are too stupid to realize that comic =/= kiddie material.

Guys, protect your handle by getting an avatar. This way, your post is linked with both gravatar.com and wordpress. Go on both and sign up and pick your avatar. You must use your email address on all 3 sites (here, gravatar.com and wordpress) for your avatar to appear.

Also, DS does know EVERYONE who posts IP address so she can tell who is the fraud. If the avatar and the e-mail address do NOT match…she knows who the fraud is.

Debbie – I’m not sure I see your point. Of course, it’s never wrong to kill off Nazis and other bigots, but I don’t think that that is the main focus of the film.

Erik Lensherr is certainly the tragic hero of this movie. In addition to being given great powers, he is also given great pain. The loss of his mother and his experiences at the hands of the Nazis form his character and drives his actions for the remainder of the picture. His character is immensely sympathetic.

Who cannot say that “there but the grace of God, go I” as Erik pursues his mother’s murderers using his superpower? But does he go to far? Does he become his enemy? Can he recognize that even his power has limits and responsibilities? Erik is an everyman, and his failure is not complete, he does retain a remnant of his humanity and (in the Marvel comic book universe) eventually comes around to Charles Xavier’s way of thinking.

Comic books are a uniquely American invention (written by the sons of Jewish immigrants) and are fundamentally concerned with Right and Wrong and our responsibilities in resisting Evil.

Ma’am, you missed the point of why Xavier didn’t want Magneto to kill Shaw, first and foremost because Xavier is something of a pacifist, one who would prefer cohabitation over survival of the fittest, like Shaw and Magneto. He wanted to prevent Magneto from becoming the sort of person Shaw was, especially since Magneto believed in Shaw’s mutant supremacist agenda. And Shaw never “learned” how to get powers, he always had them. He was presented as a dark version of Xavier, a powerful mutant wanting to gather other mutants together to serve a grand purpose. But rather than promoting peace and harmony like Xavier, Shaw wanted to exterminate humanity to let mutantkind inherit the Earth.

Which, by the way, is stated as the reason why he’s going to trigger World War III. Shaw believed that mutants were “The Children of the Atom”, so a nuclear deathstorm would obviously leave mutants in control. Somehow. Personally, I don’t think he knew much about radiation, but villains are allowed to be insane.

Speaking of villains, Azazel was a character in the comics. He was created a while back, as a member of an ancient mutant race that looked very similar to traditional portrayals of devils, who went to war with a race of angelic mutants. He’s also the father of Nightcrawler, the blue, demonic-looking mutant teleporter from the second film (who is/was a Catholic priest in the comic series), which is likely why he was included in this film, given that Raven/Mystique is Nightcrawler’s mother.

Also, did you look at the rating for the movie? It’s PG-13. Now, I’m not one for debating about how each new generation is proof that humanity is losing its moral compass and our children are degenerates, yadda yadda yadda, so I would say it’s painfully obvious that this movie was not intended for children. If parents do take their kids to see it, then it’d be their fault, much like the countless parents who buy their children Grand Theft Auto, Scarface, and albums by whatever rapper that makes a “song” out of obscenities. Honestly, comics these days aren’t really for children. I’m sure you may not be aware of this, but there was recently a story where Magneto went mad with power, took over New York City, and started herding humans into extermination ovens. Granted, it later turned out it was another guy who was tricked into thinking he was Magneto and given his same powers by some sort of sentient bacteria, but that retcon was written by a different author. Magneto is not a hero, and murder, while it may be a source of delicious schadenfreude, is not to be treated as a purely heroic action.

Magneto is a tragic villain. He was first portrayed as a young child, a victim of his tormentors, who grew to be a very angry and volatile man, thirsting for revenge. And once that was done? He DID become just as terrible as the nazis. Instead of wanting to exterminate Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and whoever tickled Hitler’s fancy that week, he wanted to destroy all non-mutants in the world. He even gets called out on this in the comics by Red Skull, who says he would make an excellent nazi.

This film had nothing to do with Islam, and it bewilders me that you somehow tried to tie that in with this movie. It was an origin story, meant to show how Xavier and Magneto’s philosophies were rooted in their origins, how they initially cooperated, and then how they inevitably went their separate ways: Xavier, to found the X-Men to seek equality between mutants and humans, and Magneto, to lead the Brotherhood of Mutants on his crusade against humanity.

Oh right, I almost forgot to address your confusion over why Angel left Xavier’s team for Shaw. In the scenes before the attack on the CIA compound, she and the other young mutants who had already been gathered by Xavier and Magneto were being taunted by a few guards. When faced with the choice between fighting for people who reviled and mocked her and being among the ruling elite in the mutant world order, she chose Shaw. Her choice is made all the more saddening because it’s rather easy for anyone who has felt like an outcast in their life to sympathize with her plight. After all, how many of us have lived vicariously in our imaginations and day dreams, using power we don’t hold in real life to punish our tormentors? You yourself were undoubtedly wishing you could be in Magneto’s place in the Argentinian scene, and it would be hard to fault you in that regard. But now I fear I may be going off on a tangent.

This movie isn’t your traditional summer action flick. Rather than hoping for a happy ending for our heroes, anyone familiar with the source material (and the movie trilogy) knows that the schism between Xavier and Magneto is inevitable, and this knowledge creates an atmosphere of dread for the audience as the breaking point draws nearer. Is it a perfect movie? No. But I would still say it was fairly good. And that’s my two cents. Thank you for reading my comments, if you took the time to do so.

Also terrorist attacked America not Muslims around the world. Muslims died in the 9/11 attack as well. This Muslim teenager helped others around him whilst attack was in process. I am a Muslim myself and was taught to be peaceful all my life. My family sees the terrorists as corrupted, belief twisting, morons. Those who understand the propaganda against my deepest respect to you. Also this article pushes Islam into it while Islam is so irrelevant to this film. I come looking for reviews and I get this. I learned more from the wise comments then the article. Peace be upon you all.

Not sure what batch of crazy hatched in the comments section of this post, but just adding my 2 cents on the movie/source material.

1. In the previous X-Men films, Mystique strolls around unclothed when not impersonating anyone. Not being intimately familiar with the source material (I’ve only read the first 30-40 issues on DVD), I can only guess that this is the case in the books as well.

2. This movie feels close to the spirit of the characters and at least the early comics- particularly Xavier’s pacifism and Magneto’s belief in mutant superiority. In the first batch of issues, there is frequent commentary about homo sapiens vs. homo superior (mutants).

3. All in all, the movie was enjoyable. The cameo by Wolverine is great, and we see a brief glimpse of Storm (and probably others). Everyone I’ve talked to who saw the movie (I work at a theater, so it’s a decent number of people) has uniformly liked it. Few action movies have generated similar feedback, so this looks like a movie that will do reasonably well long-term.

“He who seeks revenge should dig two graves.” Old Italian saying. So, while you may think that Xavier’s philosophy of rising above our more vicious instincts was just something the liberals cobbled together at NPR, the reality (that pesky little thing) is that the theme of revenge being poisonous to the soul is a very old theme, traceable all the way back to Renaissance drama. Xavier didn’t care what happened to Shaw but what happened to Magneto, and he knew that once Magneto gave into his hate once, he would do it again and again, hurting himself and those around him. This point was proven only minutes later when his rage against the fleet caused him to hurt his best friend. You can’t act with hate and expect things to do well, even if your target deserves your fate. Or if that feels all to hippy, how about religious? “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.” His. No one else’s.

I feel you may have missed important parts of the movie as you were too busy fuming about Islam. It’s funny that you would bring it up in relation to this movie, as one of the themes of the movie was people reacting with panic and prejudice towards a people they view as a threat due to the actions of a few members of that group. Perhaps you should try to learn some things about Islam that don’t come from terrorists or fear based news programs. It could help your world view or at the very least, your movie going experience.

finally got to see this, I thought it would be horrid, but to me it was the best of the franchise so far. perfect ? no. Thansk to Verant for pointing out everything missed by Debbie in this movie (hey, she isn’t the target audience, it’s cool).

I grew up reading the comics and really enjoyed the treatment of the characters here. Xavier really shows how he can help people control their powers.. but yet he;s fun at the bars! hah.

Magento sees humans as neanderthals (he acutally says it during the beach scene) so he is becoming nazi like himself. In the comics I cant remember ever rooting for the guy perse like this movie almost made you do… He isn’t a hero in the comic story lines at all.

The scene in Argentina was just fantastic… the awkwardness when they sip their beers… it really felt right out of Inglorious Basterds.

The movie also felt very bond during the first half, I really enjoyed it.

DK: I said that scene was fantastic–at the Argentinian bar with the Nazis. But then the movie makes it as if Magneto is bad for wanting to kill the Nazi who actually murdered his mother b/f his eyes. Doesn’t make sense. DS

I totally agree. This guy murdered his MOTHER, in front of his eyes, when he was like 8 years old, just for some science experiment. I have no idea why charles objected to his killing him. Also, the movie makes it like that act of killing his mothers murderer, was what made Magneto a villain. Absurd. Magneto is the hero of this story

I totally agree. This guy murdered his MOTHER, in front of his eyes, when he was like 8 years old, just for some science experiment. I have no idea why charles objected to his killing him. Also, the movie makes it like that act of killing his mothers murderer, was what made Magneto a villain. Absurd. Magneto is the hero of this story

Hello everyone,
How the hell would it offend Muslims? In world war 2 Muslims helped Jews hide in Muslim mosques as well. Some Muslims were on Germany side (ass*****) but other Muslims were recruited to fight against Nazi Germany.

P (a/k/a a Muslim): Reality check: Muslims formed two divisions of the SS. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was instrumental in helping Hitler design the Final Solution of Jews. He frequently met with Hitler and urged him to speed up the Final Solution and bring it to the Middle East. That is the Muslim contribution to the Holocaust. After the war, the Muslim countries, including Egypt and Syria gave safe haven to some of the most brutal, murderous Nazi war criminals and enlisted them in their war against the Jews, getting them to develop bombs for use against Israel–bombs that contained fatal germs and diseases. There is a reason Mein Kampf is most popular in the Muslim world. They hate Jews and want them dead. Stop lying! DS

Those were corrupted leaders of the Muslim nation. Also search how Muslims hid Jews in the mosque. Not all Muslims are bad, because if we were all bad then why are we allowed in Australia, America etc. I have awesome Jewish friends and even Gay friends. Every nation has bad people in them.

Don’t know what Muslims you are talking about. I am a Muslim Jewish and Gay friends. I have been taught peace all my life and Hazarat Mahommed did befriend Jews back in his time. Also he searched through their scriptures and regarded them as brothers believe or not. Let us stop arguing because it isn’t going to achieve much at all because none of us will agree with each other. Just to let you know this is my views.

Shaw wasn’t a Nazi. Shaw USED the Nazi’s and admired their goals as they were very similar to his own. Second, the scene where he kills the 2 Nazi’s is meant to convey the chaos going on in the boy. His use of his power was uncontrolled, it was simply a bad idea to wear a metal helmet in the same room with him.

And the idea that seeking revenge, going around killing people is a good thing is appalling. Killing someone to support a mere believe is a travesty… whether its a Nazi, Islamic extremist, or pre-civil rights slave owner. But a greater travesty is to believe revenge is justice or to believe that killing out of revenge will eliminate this from happening. Revenge simply puts you on the same level as the aggressor. Ever seen batman? Same theme of redemption from the need for revenge. Wonder what you had to say about that film?

People like you attempt to undo everything progressive about the psyche of the human race. You are obviously one of those sad idiots who is more concerned with political spin than intrinsic value or truth.

@debbie – how do you have this job when you are horrible at figuring out the plot if a comicbook movie? you exclaim they don’t explain why he wants to start a war… does our boss know youre sneaking into thru lobby for more dibs instead of paying attention? idiot. just cause people pay attention to your face means thy think you put out… but posting things like his on the internet…. man I’m laughing at you in my vest sterling ar her impression. its kind of cute how dumb you are.

@norm – Detroit film critic…. read above statement

@people who keep saying Muslims instead of terrorist… the bomb your family is making for the abortion clinic can’t build itself so quit reading this. Christians and their terrorist ways. that’s what they all are! terrorist!!! makes me sick

just making a point… I’m actually as Christian as every other white republican from the south.. I’m just very anti stupid people.